How to get your Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign to the top

The co-founder of the crowdfunding site gives tips on raising money.

Danae Ringelmann, co-founder of crowdfunding site Indiegogo, is well on her way to achieving the mission she set for herself back in 2008 when the company launched—democratize funding.

"In a world where everybody is funding everything, the role of gatekeeper will become obsolete," she told Wired UK at Web Summit 2012. "Who's to say who should be able to raise money and who should not? We don't believe it's anybody's right to make that decision. In that world you want a system where the cream rises to the top based on meritocratic reasons, not someone's biased opinions. We're in the business of truly democratizing funding."

Successful campaigner Cathy Pearson, who directed and produced a film about picture editor John G Morris, spent around three months putting her pitch together for Indiegogo. She raised 40 percent of her film's total budget.

Joining Ringelmann on stage at Web Summit, Pearson said she hoped for a day when broadcasters would see the platform as a legitimate funding source. In the meantime, absolutely anything (legal) can be pitched on the site.

Using the "gogo factor"—a proprietary algorithm that measures the activity in a campaign and drives the placements of projects on the site according to that data—a campaign's ongoing success or lack of is immediately clear. Ringelmann calls it the "cream rising to the top", and it's part of the transparency that allows the project to be truly democratic.

But how can a campaign nab that desirable homepage spot? Ringelmann says the company has gathered five years of data to know "what matters and what doesn't" when it comes to a successful campaign strategy. The team has nailed the key factors, including the four Ps (more on that later).

Here are Ringelmann's tips on how to get the gogo factor:

Have a very clear and transparent funding goal and deadline: Ask yourself: how much do you need to raise, by when, and what's it for? Be very transparent and specific with your use of funds. You do not need to raise 100 percent of your budget to start your company all in one campaign. You just need to be very specific with how much you are raising right now and how far that money should get you in your project. A target that's too big either represents a dollar amount the campaign owner would not know how to spend, has not explicitly outlined the total use of funds, or maybe isn't ready to hit based on the current size of their network.

Consider breaking up your funding into stages: We've seen projects come back with multiple campaigns to fund their project at different phases. And it behooves people to break down their total funding needs into chunks. It's more manageable and hitting your goal means you're executing what you said you would. That only sets you for greater success for the next funding campaign.

Film a great (and revealing) campaign video: Campaigns that have videos on average raise 114 percent more than those that don't. But you need to personalize your story. Don't just talk about what your project or product is, but why it's important and why you're the right person to do it. People need to look into your eyes and see your passion to be prepared to part with wealth because people fund people. You have to really open up.

Offer people an exciting give-back: Offer different perks at all different levels. Offer three to eight different ones—too much overwhelms, too little doesn't excite. 92 percent of campaigns that reach their goal offered perks. Have fun with them—make them exclusive and unique. I was looking at the Don Rosa campaign—he's a comic artist famous for doing Scrooge and Donald Duck—and he has a new comic book and one of the perks was a video tour of him round his house. That's pretty personal.

Be proactive in getting the word out: Use social media and e-mail. We've layered in a lot of those tools—funders will be prompted to tweet out and put it on Facebook, and that will amplify your word of mouth campaign. But be proactive and use the updates. Campaigns that use them every one to five days raise 100 percent more money than those that don't. Updates can be anything from video updates to talking about the progress of the campaign or the project itself. If one of the perks is t-shirt designs, ask them to vote for what color they want—engage your audience to get people more invested.

And keep communicating, even if something goes wrong: Funders fund based on their own confidence and we encourage funders to do their due diligence—but sometimes things go wrong anyway, and constant communication helps in these cases. One campaign, set to launch a flying disco ball at Burning Man, ultimately couldn't follow through because of bad weather. But because they did a good job updating funders along the way it was OK. We send folks reminders automatically to say you've not talked to your funders lately.

Make your early audience validate you: This is where the first 30 percent of your funding is really important. We encourage people to soft launch their campaigns and get the first 20 to 30 percent of funds from people that know them and can validate them. Once that happens, do a hard launch and start to reach out to friends of friends, bloggers, or influencers. Again, once people start to fund you they'll be prompted to tweet you. Naturally and organically, their friends of friends will start to discover it—that's how you amplify your campaign. We see that campaigns that raise the first 30 to 40 percent from people they know before stranger dollars start to come in reach their targets. Think about it, my mother would probably be much more likely to invest in me first than she would be to put money into the stranger she just met on the street—but she would fund the stranger if she knew I had. It's the social application that's happening and the credibility thing. The transparency of the Web is allowing people to fly much farther than ever before.

And the four Ps…

We've seen over the last five years that there's five reasons anyone funds anything in the world, anytime—and that's passion, perks, participation, and pride.

Passion: There's this campaign raising money for Pastor Marion. He is known as the Schindler of the Congo and has been saving lives for a decade and his life came under attack last year and his kidneys started to fail. So two reporters took it upon themselves to raise money to send him to South Africa and get his kidney transplant paid for. They reached out to all the readers who had been following the story for the last decade and they were passionate about doing good and had informed them for so many years.

Perks: We've already been over this, but as an example one campaigner at Indiegogo was a 3D printer maker who didn't have the funds to prototype his product and get it to market. So he pre-offered units as a way to raise $160,000. A lot of people that funded it wanted that 3D printer.

Participation: People want to be part of something bigger than themselves. A film called Salaam Dunk about the positive impact basketball is making in young girls' lives in Iraq. When I was a young girl I played basketball and it had a huge positive impact on my life and confidence. So while I can't quit my day job and volunteer for this film or help teach basketball to girls in Iraq, I can participate in the movement by funding this film.

Pride: This comes in all forms, but the biggest one is recognition. People like to be known for doing stuff. We've seen the Karen Klein campaign—the bus monitor who got bullied on a bus. Someone saw it online and wanted to do something about that and sent her on a vacation. You could see all the people excitedly commenting and announcements that they were the tenth funder, or the twenty-fifth. They felt involved that they're early-in and discovered it first. It was the same thing with the Tesla campaign, which raised $1.2m (£750,000).

Profit: This is actually the fifth P that doesn't exist at Indiegogo. But that could become legal soon with the Jobs Act—we totally helped that happen by writing case studies to White House senators to make that decision. We'll take a look when the regulations come out to see what it is. I generally think the reasons people fund are multiple, and when you introduce profit it doesn't mean all the motivation will shift to that side. I definitely think that there's a dynamic flow of motivations coming into play every time somebody contributes.

"In a world where everybody is funding everything, the role of gatekeeper will become obsolete," she told Wired UK at Web Summit 2012. "Who's to say who should be able to raise money and who should not? We don't believe it's anybody's right to make that decision. In that world you want a system where the cream rises to the top based on meritocratic reasons, not someone's biased opinions. We're in the business of truly democratizing funding."

Who's to say who should be able to raise money and who should not? It's nobody's right? I'm sorry - but the whole definition of crowd-funding isn't that its nobody's right, but that its *everybody's* right! The message here is completely backwards. Meritocratic reasons is a great goal, but the idea that you're phasing out people's biased opinions is ludicrous - you're simply appealing to the biased opinions of the masses as opposed to the select few.

Also - who's to say who should raise money and who should not? The person with the money, of course! Don't let that get away from you, or you will never raise a dime.

You are *not* in the business of truly democratizing funding. Only the people with disposable income get a vote. That is not a true democracy. Also, by definition, if someone has more money, they can potentially vote more if they choose to.

Don't get ahead of yourself by trying to make your rhetoric flashy.

A side rant: Please stop use of the buzzword "transparent". I don't want people to be doing things transparently - this means I cannot see what they are doing, only what they are doing stuff too. I want everything to be opaque, so that I can see who is doing stuff and what they are doing in addition to the things they are doing stuff too. A much better buzzword is clear: Be clear about what you are doing.

A side rant: Please stop use of the buzzword "transparent". I don't want people to be doing things transparently - this means I cannot see what they are doing, only what they are doing stuff too. I want everything to be opaque, so that I can see who is doing stuff and what they are doing in addition to the things they are doing stuff too. A much better buzzword is clear: Be clear about what you are doing.

"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."Transparent == clear. To be transparent (in a business sense) means to allow people to see through the normal boundaries and obfuscations into the day-to-day workings of the organization. That is being clear and open about what you are doing. If you want them to be opaque, then you have to take their word regarding what's being done with no way to know for sure if it's the truth.Its the difference between open source software and a closed source program. In the one you can see for yourself that its doing exactly what it says and the other you have to take their word that its not hiding something nefarious they don't want you to know about.

Transparent == clear. To be transparent (in a business sense) means to allow people to see through the normal boundaries and obfuscations into the day-to-day workings of the organization. That is being clear and open about what you are doing. If you want them to be opaque, then you have to take their word regarding what's being done with no way to know for sure if it's the truth.Its the difference between open source software and a closed source program. In the one you can see for yourself that its doing exactly what it says and the other you have to take their word that its not hiding something nefarious they don't want you to know about.

The word "transparent" applies to a figurative "wall" that surrounds the process, not to the organization being described as transparent. It's odd that usage in this context has ended up in this way.

A transparent government isn't a government we can't see - it's supposed to be that the walls are transparent so that we can see the government just fine.

Still, while crowdfunding is nice (giving everyone a vote), you are right in that the people with more money essentially get more votes. One interesting difference though is that the ordinary person is able to vote too - we aren't limited to venture capitalists. (I feel it's also worth noting that all crowdfunding needs to be thought of as patronage/charity/gifts... and not as a preorder, not as an investment).

I wrote a blog post about Indiegogo's spam problem a few months ago. It seems that a lot of people troll other successful campaigns and leave links in the comments to try to draw attention to themselves. It's a serious problem and if you browse around on Indiegogo you'll see a lot of spam. (Kickstarter has the same problem but, I haven't really spent as much time on their site). The reality is that there isn't enough money for everyone. Some people will get funded and others will go without. Spamming only makes the situation worse.